EU, US back up Mali intervention

Thousands of West African troops are preparing to enter Mali while French forces push on with their ground offensive against Islamist militants in the desert north.

France raised its force to 1400 soldiers and sent additional combat helicopters to back special forces fighting alongside Malian soldiers against al-Qaeda-linked insurgents.

While battles raged in Mali, European Union members agreed on Thursday in Brussels to start a training mission by February for Mali's under-equipped armed forces.

Germany sent two military transport planes to Bamako to assist in transporting regional troops from the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS). The aircraft were to pick up medical supplies in France.

In Washington, the United States has agreed to support the French airlift to deliver more troops and supplies into Mali to aid the military action by Mali soldiers, French support troops and ECOWAS units, broadcaster CNN reported.

Mali was thrown into turmoil after a coup last year that allowed separatist ethnic Tuareg rebels and Islamist hardliners to overrun the ungoverned northern desert.

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Fears of a new African terrorist haven grew as the Islamists ousted the Tuareg, imposed strict Islamic law and destroyed Muslim religious sites they deemed idolatrous in the fabled city of Timbuktu.

French forces intervened last week to stop a rebel advance on the capital Bamako as ECOWAS sped up the deployment of its force, expected to eventually reach 3300.

Extra combat helicopters had been deployed, likely in support of special forces, as France ramped up its offensive in central and northern Mali.

After days of uncertainty about the status of the central town of Kona, Malian battalion leader Didier Dakouo said on Mali state television that government troops had retaken the village. He said the troops were in standby, awaiting help to proceed to Niono about 60 kilometres from Kona.

Ansar Dine, one of three Islamist rebel groups that control northern Mali, denied any link to a hostage situation in neighbouring Algeria, where militants claimed that 35 hostages and 15 captors were killed in an Algerian military operation.

"We have (no reason) to be in there, but I know that it is the work of people who defend Islam," Ansar Dine spokesman Sand Ould Boumama told DPA by telephone.

Malian Foreign Minister Tieman Coulibaly said the hostage-taking revealed the "true face" of jihadist fighters in the region.

"Their project is purely criminal. There is nothing political about it. It's a criminal enterprise that they want to establish in a part of the world and subject us all to," he said in Brussels.

In Dublin, Antonio Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, told journalists of his concerns about growing unrest across Africa.

"The truth is that we risk to have - if the international community is not able to handle properly this situation - a conglomerate of conflicts from Libya to Nigeria, from Mauritania to Somalia, that are becoming more and more interlinked," he said.

The conflicts are a problem not only for local peoples "but also a serious threat for northern Africa, western Africa and ... also a potential impact in Europe."

At emergency talks in Brussels, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans warned that the threat of Islamist militants was "a matter of concern for all of us, and there is not one country that can hide if this threat were to present itself to the European continent".

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said a number of countries have signalled willingness to help France: "And they did not rule in or rule out any aspect of that, including military support."

Rights group Amnesty International criticised the EU for failing to secure guarantees that the African military intervention in Mali would respect human rights. Amnesty's Nicolas Beger said it was "vital" that the Malian Army get immediate human rights training.